


hope is kinda the whole point

by boykingfemme



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Christianity, Confessional, Gen, Pre-Season/Series 01, Pre-Series Sam Winchester, Religious Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:07:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28352169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boykingfemme/pseuds/boykingfemme
Summary: “My father finds his faith in the bottom of a bottle and the barrel of a gun,” Sam corrected. “He finds God in his own racing heartbeat and the life draining out of anything he thinks doesn’t deserve another day on this Earth. His honor is in his own feeling of godliness and his own code that would leave him dead in a day if anybody else cared to follow it. So no, Father, I don’t think he shares my faith. He’s only why I need it.”
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	hope is kinda the whole point

Pastor Jim’s was among the weirdest of the places they stayed. People would come in and out of the church all day, and knock right on the front door if the chapel was closed, which made studying monsters pretty damn inconvenient, since people liked to take it upon themselves to stare over their shoulders and ask far too many questions.

He figured kids like them were a bit of a novelty in a town like Pastor Jim’s, a little suburban type town on the southern border of Minnesota, where the most exciting thing was a sale at the mini-mart or high school sweethearts not getting married. Kids in clothes that wouldn’t have fit even if their bodies weren’t bordering on gaunt, who showed up out of the blue and disappeared a few weeks later, whose hands seemed to creep towards weapons they had no business having, but eyes charged with doubt that only seemed to look towards the other by their own volition, too many silent conversations and rehearsed stories and a too-close-for-comfort sort of instinct that came from living in a car with a constant threat looming over them like a personal storm cloud of bullets and claws and everything else that went bump in the night. Hell, they barely saw a reason to talk to anybody else, though they were never anything but polite, a little too polite maybe. They’d be gone before a month was up, right? No point getting attached.

But even more than the people was just the straight fact that they were in a church.

And the fact that Dean had no intent to stop sinning.

Sam wasn’t gonna claim that he lived a sin-free life. He’d broken practically every one of the commandments- he’d kept count.  _ Honor thy father and thy mother, _ the bible told him. Yeah, right. Honor wasn’t a term that left a lot open to interpretation. But when they were in a damn church, he figured it was right to at least try. If he was going to follow God’s wishes somewhere, it would be in one of His holy spaces.

Dean, on the other hand, liked to make it a point to do everything he could to sin in church, to “stick it to the big man” as he liked to crow when some girl from town would sneak out of their room with flushed cheeks, or he’d come back from one of the bars in town with poker money they didn’t even need. And Sam couldn’t even really say anything about it. Fighting among brothers was a sin just the same. 

It didn’t stop it from being an endless source of frustration. It just meant it was an exercise in self-control that he wished he didn’t have to partake in.

He picked at the wooden pew in front of him from where he sat in the second row, cross-legged with some book on Albanian werewolves forgotten in his lap. It was the pew they’d carved their initials in a few years back, though they’d carved them on the bottom where nobody would be able to see. It was nice to leave their mark, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous at the same time. The same mark, his initials to the left of Dean’s, the letters neater each time, was on the legs of tables and the walls of school bathrooms and the undersides of bartops all over the country. It was a risk they let themselves be selfish enough to take.

Risks were a funny thing as a hunter. Everything was about calculating the risk, minimizing the risk, avoiding the risk, but there was no greater risk to take than choosing to live the life. The even funnier thing was that after long enough, those risks didn’t even register. The scariest things, the most dangerous things, were indulgence, attachment,  _ normalcy. _ Maybe that was a risk he’d have to be selfish enough to take, too.

He squeezed his eyes shut and took in a long breath, letting the curtain sway in front of him, deep red like blood, the blood Dad and Dean liked to never shut up about. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

“Sam?” He could hear how caught off guard the man was, and he winced. “Is something on your mind?”

“It’s, uh, it’s been a long time since my last confession,” he admitted. “I’m not sure if the last one counted, though. I was…” he trailed off. “I was the distraction. There was a ghost in the church and somebody had to keep the priest from noticing. So I guess this is my first real confession.” He traced his initials on his leg with the tip of his finger. “I’ve lied, Father. I’ve cheated and stolen and killed. I sure as hell don’t keep the sabbath holy. I feel greed and envy, and I feel wrath, Father, so much I can barely contain it anymore.”

“You are doing His work, child, ridding the world of its evils,” the pastor told him. “One will no longer be without sin after they have cast the stone.” Something about his gentle tone made Sam want to scream.

Sam wasn’t sure what exactly he’d expected. It wasn’t like the priests were there to scream at him, they weren’t there to indulge his whims and scorn him, gifting him the righteous martyrdom he craved until he understood his fears to be legitimate. It hurt more somehow, though, not even to have his sins acknowledged. He wanted to be forgiven, not excused.

“The Lord says to honor thy father,” Sam said finally, ignoring the comfort the older man offered. “And yet the bible also says that one must fear their father.”

“There are many similarities between honor and fear,” came the reply. “Both are-”

“Both are to put a man on a pedestal,” Sam finished. “And yet the bible says not to worship anyone else as a god.”

“You do neither, then? You neither fear your father nor honor him?”

“A man is not a god, Father. A- a man  _ should _ not be God. It’s not my place or my wish to treat him as one. Lord knows he doesn’t need it. Not from me.”

“Does your father have the same type of faith as you?” the priest asked him, sounding almost amused at the thought.

He spoke slowly, each syllable enunciated with a dark sort of care. “My father finds his faith in the bottom of a bottle and the barrel of a gun,” Sam corrected. “He finds God in his own racing heartbeat and the life draining out of anything he thinks doesn’t deserve another day on this Earth. His honor is in his own feeling of godliness and his own code that would leave him dead in a day if anybody else cared to follow it. So no, Father, I don’t think he shares my faith. He’s only why I need it.” His shoulders slumped, his fight deserting him all at once, just leaving him tired, more tired than a child should have had to be. “How do you do it, Father?” he asked, barely louder than a breath, his eyes directed quite pointedly forward. 

“Do what, Sam?”

“You know about everything out there,” he continued, frowning to himself. He saw the older man nod in the corner of his eye. “Doesn’t it make you… I dunno, question it all? Seeing so much evil.”

“Faith is above all a choice, my child,” he replied, his tone mild. “Every soul can be saved.” 

The sound Sam let out was far too skeptical to be a laugh, certainly not one spilling from a child’s lips. “I’ve done terrible things,” he said harshly. He shook his head. “I don’t think God wants my faith.” 

“God will accept your faith if you offer it,” the Father promised. “But it doesn’t sound like you’re offering very much.”

“I pray,” Sam blurted, immediately on the defensive in a way that had the blood rushing to his face something fierce when his mind caught up to his mouth. “I-I mean, I…”

“What you say here is protected,” he reminded him.

Sam chewed at his bottom lip until he drew blood, leaving a metallic kind of tang in his mouth. “What does He want from me, Father? What more does He think I have to offer?” The Father started to say something but Sam cut him off. “I have  _ nothing  _ else,” he told him, cursing the way his voice trembled. “I trust that He’s there. I have faith in His power. I pray to Him every goddamn night.” He swallowed thickly, and he wished he’d swallowed his tongue along with it. “Why should I believe that He’s listening? Why should I believe that He gives a single shit? Why am I supposed to believe that He wants me redeemed?”

“It is natural to doubt what you cannot observe. Especially in your line of work.” The older man sighed. “You should not have to live a life that brings you this much doubt, this much pain.  But you must  _ choose _ to have faith in God’s plan, and in His love.”

“I can do that,” Sam swore, and he wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince. He paused, twisting his hands in his pockets. “What do I need to do? To, uh, be forgiven for sin. Do I pray, or-”

“More prayer isn’t going to change anything for you, my child,” he told him, not unkindly. “What you need is to forgive yourself.”

He thanked the Father and left in a hurry, slipping out of the church before he could hear another word and up to the room he shared with Dean.

He knelt by the bed, and he prayed.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Drop a kudo or comment if you enjoyed :))


End file.
